Bong boo-boo: Play School’s crafty contraption gives parents a giggle

A strange choice for an art and craft lesson on Play School has lit up social media with parents convinced presenter Alex Papps made a bong for his young audience.

The episode, which aired in July, has just become the talk of the internet, with jokes that the ABC2 program unintentionally showed children how to make a bong.

Host Papps – familiar to the mums out there as Frank on Home and Away – inserts a straw into a plastic bottle and seals the hole with plasticine before co-host Rachael Coopes partially fills the bottle with water using a funnel.

“Did I just see Alex Papps make a bong on Play School???” one parent writes on Instagram. And news.com.au reports there were plenty more tongue-in-cheek mentions to come: “OK, time for an ABC inquiry. They’re making bongs on Play School,” another person writes on Imgur, alongside a screenshot taken from the episode.

“The two main groups of people watching would be preschool children and unemployed stoners. They’re targeting their audience,” a Reddit user says. Other users poke fun at the theme song of the children’s program by making up some new lyrics: “There’s a cone in there … And some hash as well … And pizzas to order!”

But social media user Kevin Le puts things into perspective, with the comment that he “would question the way you raised your child if they could identify that this was a bong”.